THE SUMMER EVENING HAD BEGUN TO FOLD THE WORLD IN ITS mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand…

We arrived back in Ahakista late Thursday evening and after a pint, something to eat and some wine we went to bed for a day of getting ready.

It is not often you are 50 and I have been planning on celebrating my birthday in Ireland – hopefully with some friends and family, eating good food – hopefully some of it from out of the bay – and then spending time in the pubs drinking pints.

All that came to pass.

Breakfast Friday morning was four rashers of Gubbeen bacon with brown sauce and coffee. We then drove to Bantry for the market and to pick up more bacon and cheese. I had put in orders for both when we were there the previous week.

The cheese was a great round wheel of Milleen wrapped up in its own cardboard box and the bacon was three catering packs of Gubbeen Streaky to keep the hordes happy the following morning.

There was a worrying 15 minutes whilst I waiting for Ma Murphy’s to open.It looked dead to the world at 5 minutes to 12.00 but then a man turned up with a key and I was able to slip into one of its dark corners with my first pint of the day.

There is something satisfying being sat in a good dark pub, chairs still on the table from the night before, waiting for the first taste of the first pint of the day. There was of course a temptation to stay longer and try on the fit of another pint and then perhaps follow that on with a sip from the bottle of West Cork Whiskey I had seen in there two weeks earlier. The day was still young and I resisted the temptation.

Back at the Cottage the weather was exceptionally still and it was not until late on in the afternoon that any sort of breeze got up. We had lunch sat by Curly’s Corner looking out over the bay the water looking like sheet metal with there being no movement on it.

After lunch I took one of the kayaks out and out on the water the only sound was the noise that the paddle made as it went through the water. I had a line with me and it dragged through the water behind the kayak. It seemed too still for there to be any fish out there but I still managed to catch two good fish.

As I paddled back to the Cottage a breeze started to ripple the surface of the water and back on land there was the first rush of people arriving from England and the need to get ready for a night in the pub.

The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand….

Thank you to those that made it over, The Good Things Cafe for the food, Tommy Arundel for the lobsters and Arundel’s Pub for the music and pints.

It can be hard, very hard, leaving Ahakista on a Sunday morning to come back to Birkenhead.

This is what it looked like at about 8.00 am last Sunday.

And then the holiday draws to a close. The sun may still be shining but there will be the drive back to Dublin, the ferry to Holyhead and the long haul home. There will be the putting on of socks and a suit and the journey to a desk at work.

The mackerel will chase the sprats in on a falling tide. If the weather is calm you may see them boiling the water just off the rocks at the bottom of the garden, an unusual ruffling of the otherwise smooth surface and the occasional glimpse of a mackerels fin or tail caught for a second in the light.

As the tide goes down it creates small bays amongst the rocks and seaweed and there one day the sprats were driven in out of the deeper waters and became trapped amongst the dense tight floating brown of the seaweed that divides off the bay. A group of fifty or so seagulls gathered for the feast. Some stalked the rocks, heads darting down through the weeds, coming up with a small silver fish a couple of inches long which disappeared before they went looking for more. Two Great Black-backed gulls strutted imperiously bullying the other smaller birds aside to get top picking, the rest mostly herring and common gulls. Half a dozen terns flitted through the air, dropping their wings and diving into the water and then up again in a flurry of white and water, up into the air to swallow their catch and then back down until another opportunity was spotted and then in and up again. They were there for almost two hours as the tide went down, the water for the sprats diminished and in their panic the few survivors could be seen jumping out of the water only to be snatched away until the water had gone with the sprats and the black weed hung wet and heavy against the rocks.

The gulls took their leave noisily pulling away back to Owen Island calling complaint to each other onwards again looking for more food.

The following day was the end of that year’s holiday and we were facing the long drive back to Dublin. It had taken longer than expected to clean up and pack and we were running late. There would be no time to stop for lunch and we would have to do the 5-hour drive in one go. At last the car was packed and we were ready to go. There was no time for a last cup of coffee. We had to be off.

Galen had been ill that year and as we chided him to move towards the car he talked of being ill and how this had impinged on his enjoyment of the holiday. I suggested a final walk on the pier

Reluctantly Galen came holding my hand. Cora skipped behind. It was a cloudy grey morning. The sun still waiting to breakthrough although there was blue sky over Rosskerrig. After we had gone the pied wagtails would continue to strut their corner of the lawn and the empty Cottage would still held in the thrall of the gulls calls from Owen Island.

We did not get far down the pier before we saw that the water was sparkling. The sprats had been pushed in up to where the water lapped halfway up the slipway. They milled just under the surface in their thousands. At first I thought that the sparkle was the light catching the water as they broke the surface but then I saw that it was the brilliance of their colours just under the surface. We could see them as they swarmed. Some of them appeared translucent and others carried hints of the pinks, blues and green that move over the belly of a mackerel just after it has been caught. The colours changed as they moved through the light. It seemed a small miracle in the rush to be off, the tempers lost and frayed with the thought of the journey and the drudge back to work next day. They appeared as distant stars do in a black night sky merging back into the dark but out of the corner of my eye they kept coming back another faint prick of light lost with all the others. We turned and walked quietly back to the car.

With the rising of the moon from November Dark the mackerel made their way to deep water.

Good to think that this year we will be back in the pub this Friday to celebrate a party!

Looking out of the window the weather is grey and full of too much character; the wind is gusting in from the water and each squall sends across a burst of rain. The sky is nothing but a sheer wall of grey in front of us.

Thursday was bright enough for a walk round Gortavallig.

Down by The Cove where JG Farrell slipped off a rock whilst fishing and drowned the water churned up against the slipway. It looked wild and angry and it wasn’t hard to imagine how difficult it would be to climb out again should you fall in.

Further up the hill towards the old mine workings the wind was strong enough to blow back a stream as it tried to flow down a cliff and specks of white sea drift floated through the air.

We had lunch by the collapsed miner’s cottages – a row of about five stone huts high on the hill looking out over Bantry Bay. The miners were brought in from Cornwall to search for copper ore for a couple of years in the 1840’s. Unfortunately the dreamed for riches were not to be found and the mine closed after just two years.

We were there on a day in August but the wind still blew hard through the cottages and the sky that was being blown in from the Atlantic was heavy with rain. It must have been a wild and terrible place a hundred and fifty years ago on a winter’s day.

The rain stayed away for us and we were able to finish the walk ambling along the quite country lane that would its way through green fields back to our car.

That evening we had a lobster soup.

Four lobsters from Tommy Arundel. I cooked them two at a time in a large pan of boiling sea water. As they cooled I sweated onions and garlic in olive oil in the same pan in which I had cooked the lobsters.

I took the lobsters outside to split them and prise out every last nugget of white meat.

The shells then went into the pan and I cracked them with the back of a wooden spoon. I then made use of the Pernod, pouring some into a ladle, setting it alight with the flame from the stove and then tipping it into the pan. The flames were big enough to light up the whole kitchen.

I then sloshed in some white wine, a couple of tins of tomatoes, tomato puree, a handful of fennel from the pier patch and topped it up with water. Seasoning was salt, pepper and a few crushed chillies.

To eat I strain the liquor out of the pan and then poured it back in and stirred through the lobster meat to heat through.

We ate it with bread listing to Exile on Main st.